[The
above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside
thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant. I
welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this
video.]
“Travels with Herodotus” gives a wonderful taste of Kapuscinski’s travel writing. Those familiar with some of his earlier books – “Another Day of Life,” “The Emperor,” and “The Shadow of the Sun” – will detect his distinctive voice here. He even recalls visiting some of the same places in this book, including India, China, and northern Africa.
As the title hints at, Herodotus is a kind of trope liberally interlarded throughout the book: he is source for meditations on the philosophy of history, the place of humans in relationship to the gods, and occasional thoughts on subjects as various and sundry as ethnography, the customs of local people, and the birth of the historian’s wanderlust.
The book opens with Kapuscinski’s recounting of his discovery of Herodotus, remembering that when he was in school there was regrettably no reliable translation in Polish (his native language); he only discovers him later when he is given the book as a gift early in his career before beginning his travels. On the first page of the book, he immediately finds a kindred spirit. He is in awe of Herodotus, a man we know little of, but whose inexhaustible curiosity about people, their mores, history, and ideas obviously inspired him – and reminds him much of himself.
The interplay of the Herodotus and Kapuscinski shed light on one another in unexpectedly beautiful ways. The stories of Solon, Croesus, Darius, and Xerxes, and many others, are retold and reexamined. Points of continuity start to appear between Kapuscinski’s travels and Herodotus’, each of which sing in tandem with one another.
There seems to be some fracas regarding the author’s conscious mixture of reportage and literary writing, but I never got the sense that he was trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the reader or that he was “rewriting history.” I found his writing less fictive than imaginative. After all, what historian claims to write without the aid of imagination?
I thought this was a great place to start to get a taste of Kapuscinski’s unique literary voice. It will certainly plant a seed of interest in both writers, if it isn’t there already.
As the title hints at, Herodotus is a kind of trope liberally interlarded throughout the book: he is source for meditations on the philosophy of history, the place of humans in relationship to the gods, and occasional thoughts on subjects as various and sundry as ethnography, the customs of local people, and the birth of the historian’s wanderlust.
The book opens with Kapuscinski’s recounting of his discovery of Herodotus, remembering that when he was in school there was regrettably no reliable translation in Polish (his native language); he only discovers him later when he is given the book as a gift early in his career before beginning his travels. On the first page of the book, he immediately finds a kindred spirit. He is in awe of Herodotus, a man we know little of, but whose inexhaustible curiosity about people, their mores, history, and ideas obviously inspired him – and reminds him much of himself.
The interplay of the Herodotus and Kapuscinski shed light on one another in unexpectedly beautiful ways. The stories of Solon, Croesus, Darius, and Xerxes, and many others, are retold and reexamined. Points of continuity start to appear between Kapuscinski’s travels and Herodotus’, each of which sing in tandem with one another.
There seems to be some fracas regarding the author’s conscious mixture of reportage and literary writing, but I never got the sense that he was trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the reader or that he was “rewriting history.” I found his writing less fictive than imaginative. After all, what historian claims to write without the aid of imagination?
I thought this was a great place to start to get a taste of Kapuscinski’s unique literary voice. It will certainly plant a seed of interest in both writers, if it isn’t there already.
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